Daily Archives: July 3, 2006

Preseason playoff favorites, the Indians are now, one game shy of the season’s half-way point, 18 games out of first place in the AL Central, 15.5 games behind in the Wild Card race, and three games below .500. While simply matching their Pythagorean record would improve their record, and thus the above standings, by six games, the Indians, an organization overflowing with young talent, has decided to take a longer view of their future.

The result is that starter Jason Johnson, signed to a one-year deal this past winter but dragging the team down with a 5.96 ERA was released and top pitching prospect Jeremy Sowers was called up to fill his spot. Veteran first baseman Eduardo Perez, signed to platoon with Ben Broussard–and excellent strategy that resulted in a .303/.343/.636 line from Perez and, with Perez taking all of the at-bats against lefties, the 29-year-old Broussard’s best season–was flipped to Seattle for 20-year-old middle-infield prospect Asdrubal Cabrera, making room for perennial minor league masher and righty-hitting first baseman Ryan Garko on the Cleveland roster. Meanwhile, with both corner outfielders on the DL, the Tribe has called up Franklin Gutierrez, one of their top outfield prospects, and have been starting him in right field. The Indians have also returned veteran backup catcher Tim Laker to the minors in exchange for Kelly Shoppach, the 26-year-old catching prospect obtained from the Red Sox in the Coco Crisp deal. Shoppach has been receiving his fair share of starts behind the plate, while the Indians have been working star catcher Victor Martinez into their first-base picture in order to keep his bat in the line-up on “off” days.

These moves are at the most a couple of weeks old (Gutierrez for Casey Blake in right) and in some cases (Garko for Perez) happened just a couple days ago, so there’s little to say as of yet about how these players are panning out, though the Yankees will get a good look at one of the more compelling little Indians tonight when they face Sowers in what will be just his second major league start.

Sowers was drafted by the Indians out of Vanderbilt University in June 2004 and made his professional debut in 2005 working his way all the way from the single-A Caroline League to the triple-A International League in his first pro season. After a rough spring training with the big club this March, Sowers returned to triple-A, where he had made just one start the year before, and went 9-1 with a 1.39 ERA in 15 starts despite an unimpressive K:BB ratio of 1.86 that was due largely to a low strikeout rate. His major league debut came at home a week before Sunday against the Reds.

In that game, Sowers pitched well in four of his five innings, but was undone by a fourth inning in which a lead-off walk was plated by a Ken Griffey Jr. homer and an infield single also came around to score on a home run by Adam Dunn. The end result was an ugly 7.20 ERA and a 4-2 Indians’ loss, but one can hardly blame a rookie for giving up taters to Griffey and Dunn. Meanwhile, the walk was the only one he surrendered while throwing 61 percent of his pitches for strikes, striking out three Reds in his five innings of work.

The Yankees jumped all over Alay Soler on Sunday, but they could easily come down with a case of the URPs against the 23-year-old Sowers, who is a very highly touted prospect who gets by on guile, changing speeds and breaking pitches rather than heat and sheer physical ability.

Looking to keep pace with Sowers will be Chien-Ming Wang, who turned in a gem his last time out against the Braves, needing just 91 pitches through eight innings, while holding the Braves to two runs over that span. Wang has steadily improved as the season has worn on, posting a 4.80 ERA in April, a 4.28 ERA in May, a 3.19 overall ERA in June and a 2.39 ERA in his last five starts, each of which saw him pitch a minimum of seven innings.

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I caught some of “Melinda and Melinda,” a mediocre but not entirely unwatchable Woody Allen movie this morning. It came out a few years back. Will Ferrell is in it and isn’t especially effective because she’s just doing the Woody-Stand-In schtick. Since Woody won’t write wise-ass variations of his own comic persona virtually every actor who has ever played a protagonist in a Woody Allen movie ends up doing their immitation of Woody. Heck Mia Farrow was doing Woody towards the end of their run together. But anyhow, I got in the Woody frame of mind watching the movie.

Then, as I was going through some old papers, I found a xerox copy of something that my cousin Sammy wrote to her father in the late ’80s when she was an art history major at Brown. Sammy has always loved the Wood Man. She was the first person I ever watched “Annie Hall” with I think, and Sam used to watch “Purple Rose of Cairo” anytime she was sad and needed to cry. In many ways she’s right out of one of his movies–incredibly beautiful, very smart, and really funny. You know, Amanda Peet could be one of her friends. A goy physically but very New York even though she grew up in Boston. She loves being married into my father’s family because they’re Jewish, or as Sam likes to describe herself, Jew-“ish.”

My uncle Fred is a painter and he’s from the old school, meaning he’s got zero tolerance for the pretentions of art criticism. He went to Cooper Union in the mid-fifties and hung around the Cedar Bar when deKooing and Kline and abstract expressionaist painters were the bomb. And there was his daughter, knee-deep in eggheads up at Brown. So she sent the following to her old man and he had it tacked up in his studio for years. It amused me so much that I must have copied it at some point. I found it up at my mom’s house last year. Funny the things you keep.

At the top of the page in captial letters:

YOUR $20,000 PAY FOR ME TO LEARN PHRASES LIKE THESE:

Matisse: “to theatricalize the finish. To finish with unfinish–a pictorial symbol”
“the unneatness, that freshness that refuses to go unfresh”
“a certain one-ness”
“a tickled dimensionality”

Braque: “oscillating in its stress of adhesion of units on the surface of the painting”

Van Gogh: “certain motific elements”

Monet: “wonderful rumble of pictorial information to flat projectively plastic”

Picasso: “a repeating planometric chant”

Leger: “residual echo of modernity and its imaging embedded in its dissident views”

What I wouldn’t give for a large sock o’ horse manure.

Jaret Wright had virtually nothing on Sunday night and left before the end of the second inning, having already allowed four runs to score. Not wanting to be out-sucked, Alay Soler was torched for eight runs in the third inning as the Bombers got their Bomb back and unloaded on the Mets, 16-7. Ron Villone was effective in an emergency relief call and earned the win. And whatta ya hear, whatta ya say, Alex Rodriguez was the big man hitting a grand slam and a three-run dinger, but for the Mets fan sitting next to me in the upper deck last night, the game will go down as “the Nick Green” game. Green, making his first start at second base for the Yankees led off the third inning with a walk. He would come up again later in the inning and my pal leaned over and asked, “When is the last time a .077 hitter walked twice in one inning?” We’ll never know the answer because Green plasted a two-run homer to left center. My friend, though undoubtedly discouraged, couldn’t help but laugh. The next time Green came to the plate his average was up to .100.

It was just one of those nights. Mets catcher Paul LoDuca took exception to the way Alex Rodriguez reacted after hitting his grand slam and jawed at him some after Rodriguez crossed the plate. Lighten up, Francis. I think LoDuca was just sticking up for his pitcher, and that is fine. He was upset but I don’t think Rodriguez was trying to show the Mets up and his celebration was nothing that you don’t see all the time these days. LoDuca has got a good dose of the red ass in him anyhow, which is what you like to see in your catcher. But whatever hard feelings he had, they weren’t too serious as the Mets didn’t even brush Rodriguez off the plate in the next two at bats–a single and another homer. (LoDuca is one of six Mets to make the All-Star team, while four Yankees–Rodriguez, Jeter, Cano and Mariano made it.) For Rodriguez is was a huge game and he was showered with cheers, standing o’s, the whole sh-bang.

The game was delayed about an hour due to some light rain and the first four innings moved slowly despite the excitement. The place was definitely juiced but this was going to be a typical American League sluggfest. It felt like it was going to be a long night’s journey into day and sure enough I didn’t arrive back at my crib until just after 2:00. Still, after the Bombers scored their 16th run in the fifth inning, there was not much tension left. The crowd gradually thinned-out and the last part of the game moved briskly. For Yankee fans it was the kind of anti-climax to thoroughly enjoy.